In literature, I've been trying with the russians, but Dostoyevski was kind of grim. I'll give a chance to Tolstoi.

May I suggest Gogol.

I've always found Gogol's work rather horrifying, especially "The Nose" and "The Overcoat." Good stuff but lighthearted it's not. I don't know how much appeal it would have to someone who finds Dostoevsky too "grim."

In literature, I've been trying with the russians, but Dostoyevski was kind of grim. I'll give a chance to Tolstoi.

May I suggest Gogol.

I've always found Gogol's work rather horrifying, especially "The Nose" and "The Overcoat." Good stuff but lighthearted it's not. I don't know how much appeal it would have to someone who finds Dostoevsky too "grim."

I think you are missing the satire.

My point is that Gogol's satire is depressing and grotesque. (Unless you mean that your suggestion wasn't serious, and in that case, yes, I did miss it.)

Madame Bovary on the other hand...talk about depressing. It makes even Dostoyevski's Demons seem lighthearted...

I hated the book when I read it for High School. So many descriptions! But 10 years after failed and successful relationships, now I can understand the character as a romantic Quixote and that very idea is great.

My problem with Dostoyesvski is that I started with Crime & Punishment....and wow, it was like several punches in my soul. My brother recommended me that I tried with Karamazov Brothers or The Idiot, but couldn't find a good edition...

Vance Packard, The Status Seekers (1959)Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)R.W. Southern, Western Society & the Church in the Middle Ages (1970)Robert Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (2012)Gabriel Garcia Marques, Love in the Time of Cholera (1988)

Scott, I'm not sure what details of Jesus' life you're most interested in, but if you're looking for an account of how his how his divinity was interpreted over the several hundred years following the resurrection, I recommend When Jesus Became God.

I'm working through about a dozen books stowed in various shelves and crannies at my apartment. Here are a few of them:

Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin, George KennanEvil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, Susan Neiman (I made it about halfway through this one a few years ago... picked it up again over a recent lazy weekend)Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization, Robert Wade (surprisingly readable for economic writing)Truman, David McCullough (too hagiographic to be interesting, but I got it last Christmas and feel obligated to finish by the end of the year)Inside Terrorism, Bruce HoffmanThe Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein (I started on this one a few months ago, but I might put it down to read the entire series in order)Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United, Zephyr Teachout (I haven't read any reviews, so I have no idea what to expect from this one)

Also re-reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72... not a good book to work through during finals week, but whatever.

1) Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber - The first three chapters have been fascinating, and the ideas integrate in some really interesting ways with the questions about trust, reciprocity, and identity that we've been discussing in the course on behavioral economics that I'm currently taking.

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2) Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, David Foster Wallace - Picked this up after reading Wallace's essay on Kafka.

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3) The Castle, Franz Kafka - Ughhhhh... fortunately for my neighbors, there have been no fits of laughter here.

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4) Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips - This one was a Christmas gift. It's not particularly well written, and Phillips' cagey treatment of inflation has me questioning the reliability of his entire account. He also virtually ignores slave wealth, a glaring omission for any book that claims to provide "a political history of the American rich."